WomenCorporateDirectors and Spencer Stuart enter partnership

Spencer Stuart and WomenCorporateDirectors (WCD) have decided to team up, creating an alliance to serve board members and advance best practices in corporate governance across North America.

The strengths of WCD, a global organization of women board directors, and Spencer Stuart, an executive search consulting firm, have created a partnership encompassing board research, director events, and additional thought leadership initiatives for building better boards.

"The power of this partnership is in working together to achieve a common objective: helping to build the best boards possible," said Julie Hembrock Daum, head of Spencer Stuart's North American Board Practice and a member of the firm's own board, said in a statement.

WCD, consisting of over 2,500 directors serving on more than 3,500 boards, is growing across the world, with 60 chapters to date on six continents to date. Spencer Stuart will work with WCD launching new chapters and sharing its expertise at chapter events and the Global Institute.

"By connecting companies with the highest-performing directors, and ensuring that directors get the information and insights they need to serve, Spencer Stuart and WCD are truly raising the game in corporate governance,” Daum continued.

Spencer Stuart is coming on in the midst of huge growth for WCD. The aggregate market capitalization of the public companies on whose boards its members serve was calculated at almost $8 trillion. Recently, chapters have opened in Panama, Kansas City, Iceland, and Quebec with chapters in Denver, Northern Florida/Southern Georgia, Hawaii, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, Rio de Janeiro, and South Korea.

"As WCD is growing so quickly, we sought a partner who could help us further expand our reach and influence, and drive home the importance of diversity of thought in the boardroom. Spencer Stuart is a firm committed to creating boards that are multi-gender, multi-talented, multi-ethnic, multi-generational, and multi-national," said Stautberg.

In the partnership, Spencer Stuart and WCD will work on several initiatives around boards and governance, including research surveying hundreds of directors globally; WCD's new Thought Leadership Council will develop research on a governance issue each year and; WCD's Family Business Advisory Council will explore governance challenges facing boards of family-owned businesses.

Stautberg added, "What Spencer Stuart brings to the table is unparalleled: their experience in helping boards identify and recruit high-caliber directors for public corporations, major private and family-owned businesses, high-growth startups, and nonprofit organizations – providing both a deep and broad level of insight in what makes a boardroom work."